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Second, there are delays in death reporting that make mortality data provisional and incomplete in the weeks, months, and even years after a death occurs - even in richer countries with high-quality mortality reporting systems.During the pandemic the actual coverage might be even lower. The UN estimates that, in “normal” times, only two-thirds of countries register at least 90% of all deaths that occur, and some countries register less than 50% - or even under 10% - of deaths. But in many low- and middle-income countries, undercounting of mortality is a serious issue. In richer countries with high-quality mortality reporting systems, nearly 100% of deaths are registered. First, not all countries have the infrastructure and capacity to register and report all deaths.The reported number of deaths might not count all deaths that occurred.
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Important points about excess mortality figures to keep in mind To see the P-scores for other countries click The chart here shows excess mortality during the pandemic for all ages using the P-score. Our charts using the five-year average are still accessible in links in the sections below.įor reported deaths, we source our data from both WMD and the Human Mortality Database. 9 The WMD projection, on the other hand, does not suffer from this limitation because it accounts for these year-to-year trends. 8 We made this change because using the five-year average has an important limitation - it does not account for year-to-year trends in mortality and thus can misestimate excess mortality. Previously we used a different expected deaths baseline: the average number of deaths over the years 2015–2019. 6 Their model can capture both seasonal variation and year-to-year trends in mortality.įor more details on this method, see the article Karlinsky and Kobak (2021) Tracking excess mortality across countries during the COVID-19 pandemic with the World Mortality Dataset. 5 They then use the model to project the number of deaths we might normally have expected in 2020–2023. 4 To produce this estimate, they first fit a regression model for each region using historical deaths data from 2015–2019. We use an estimate produced by Ariel Karlinsky and Dmitry Kobak as part of their World Mortality Dataset (WMD). The baseline of expected deaths can be estimated in several different ways.
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Excess mortality is measured as the difference between the reported number of deaths in a given week or month (depending on the country) in 2020–2023 and an estimate of the expected deaths for that period had the COVID-19 pandemic not occurred.
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